End of year report

Usually, I would expect to end the year s quietly as possible hiding low with a glass of port, a roaring fire, and a friend or two. This year, however, there is chaos as work continues on the house on Big Hill.
New studio equipment is due to be delivered this week – and there is still nowhere to put it. Every step through the home involves tripping over, tools, tiles and toys. There is plaster dust settling on everything, and the plumber continues to dazzle with his ineptitude.
However, new disks have arrived from Colin Potter, and C sent me a thoroughly recommendable CD that Ivo Watts Russell did some time ago (The Hope Blister’s Underarms) which has been warming my little room all afternoon. Droning strings aplenty and very nice too. People have said a couple of things in the past few days which continue to make me have strange thoughts about undertaking acoustic versions of some of the consolation / pilgrim material – just to show that it can be done!

Other little thoughts passing through the gorse valley of my winter mind in this period of enforced inactivity? If I am to make a resolution it is that I want – more than ever – Human Greed to do something live in 2007. For a while i have been getting increasingly distracted over how I should be equipping the studio for the forthcoming “Pigs and Chickens” sessions. Mac or PC? Software or Outboard? I think it’s going to be a case of continuing to record with PC, but with an increased level of outboard gear being deployed. But for live work I am going to pursue the mac as being the most appropriate software solution. I want some – just a little – no more than can be easily carried – outboard gear to be involved; just enough to feel like we’re playing something, rather than clicking “play”

Mind you, with the recent arrival of signal processors and an old eBow it would appear that heavily treated guitars could be coming back into the mix – somethng that Deryk and I haven’t indulged in since – oooh – 1982!

We’ll see… we’ll see…

For those few of you who take time to pass through these lines and send mail – I hope you are ending your year peacefully and happily and I wish you all the very best for 2007.

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